Jacinda Ardern’s Juggling Act

Last Wednesday afternoon, Jacinda Ardern, the thirty-eight-year-old Prime Minister of New Zealand, sat on a couch in her suite at the Plaza Hotel recounting her day to a small circle of advisers. She wore a patterned silk dress and a black suit jacket, and had tucked her long, dark hair behind her ears. There had been a trilateral meeting with the President of Chile and the Prime Minister of Canada on trade, at the Bloomberg Business Forum, and a climate-change meeting hosted by the U.N. Secretary-General. Now her most demanding constituent needed to be placated. Ardern lifted her three-month-old daughter, Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford, into the air and settled on the couch to nurse. The press is “very interested in Iran at the moment,” Ardern continued, as Neve started to fuss. “I’m going to pump,” she said, switching gears.

“Do you want me to hold her for a second?” Paula Wilson, her foreign-policy adviser, asked.

“All hands on deck,” Ardern said, smiling, as she handed Neve off. She slipped a set of wireless breast pumps into her top and remarked, to a visitor, “She has a lot of uncles and aunties.”

Ardern gave birth on June 21st, less than a year after being sworn in—making her only the second elected world leader to have a baby while in office. Her partner, Clarke Gayford, a television host, cares for Neve full time. “It was a no-brainer to say, ‘Right, I’ll take care of her, you take care of the country,’ ” he said, at the Plaza.

The couple has committed to raising their daughter on the world stage, to help blaze a path for other families. At times, this has made them objects of fascination, such as earlier that week, when Gayford brought Neve to the floor of the U.N. General Assembly. But it has also generated a backlash, such as when Ardern decided to attend the Pacific Island Forum—a staple appearance for the New Zealand Prime Minister, which, for Ardern, necessitated a taxpayer-funded flight back to New Zealand to nurse Neve, who was too young to receive vaccines. (One headline: “Extra costs for taxpayers so PM can spend more time with baby.”)

Ardern finished briefing her advisers. She pulled out a compact and dabbed concealer under her eyes. Neve was still on New Zealand time, leading Gayford to tweet, two nights earlier, “We’ve watched so much bad late night tv together that her mum came out at 2am and busted us watching cage fighting in our underpants.” Gayford reported that the previous night had been more restful, despite “a few grizzles.” A few what?

Neve surveyed the room with a steely expression. “That’s a good Winston Churchill look,” Ardern said. “I hate to tell you, but that’s also her ‘I’m going to the toilet’ gaze.’ ”

After giving birth, Ardern took six weeks of maternity leave, and returned to the office committed to continuing breastfeeding. The decision has presented logistical challenges: she has nursed through conference calls with cabinet ministers and during radio interviews. Gayford said, “I’ve had to run through the parliamentary buildings on emergency trips, knock on doors, and interrupt meetings.” (The couple does not employ a nanny, he added. “Just me.”)

Someone checked the time. Ardern was due at the Ed Sullivan Theatre, a few blocks away, for a taping of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” “I can pump and walk,” she said, gamely. (Her wireless breast pumps, purchased in the U.S., “have made it possible to do my job,” she said.) Her press secretary, Andrew Campbell, discussed the plan with a Secret Service agent stationed outside the room. He returned shaking his head. “We just got the ‘Absolutely no way,’ ” he said.

They took a car. In the green room, Neve rested in her car seat, which had been placed on a low table. A television was tuned to President Trump’s U.N. press conference: “A lot of the news is fake,” Trump said, onscreen. “A lot of the people sitting here are fake.”

“The sound of Trump is helping her to drift off,” Gayford said, rocking Neve’s car seat. Ardern shimmied into a second Spanx underskirt, and reflected on her dual roles as mother and world leader. She and Gayford had opted to pay out of pocket for his and Neve’s travel to the U.N., although it wasn’t strictly necessary. “I think it would look harder for women to do both roles if all they see is me being criticized,” Ardern said. “So I try to make sure that I don’t create too many excuses to be criticized.” If anything, she said, she wanted to spread the message that “I’m normal. And that there are normal people in politics who sometimes consider whether they should wear one or two layers of Spanx.” ♦

This article appears in the print edition of the October 8, 2018, issue, with the headline “Grizzles.”